With the launch of Stray, a third-person adventure puzzle game where you play as a stray cat that lost its way and fell down a hole into a mysterious walled city controlled by humanoid robots and mutated killer zurks, a new taste for video games was born, namely one where you play as an animal and navigate the world from its unique perspective.
But Stray was not the start of animal simulators, and it definitely won’t be the last. Whether you’re navigating an open world, managing a survival situation, building a family or attacking a human colony, animal simulators are and will be some of the most exciting - and often mind-boggling - games to ever make it on Steam. Here are some of the best.
10 WolfQuest: Anniversary Edition
In this 3D WildLife simulation game, you explore a massive open world alone or online with friends as wild wolves. Together, you start a family of cubs, avoid and overtake predators and other scavengers looking to make you their lunch, explore the expansive Yellowstone habitat, hunt prey, and follow a number of quests that develop your survival skills in the unforgiving northern range.
The game is surprisingly lifelike, most of all Yellowstone, the backdrop of WolfQuest, which was actually chosen for wolf reintroduction in real life back in the mid 1990s. Today, Yellowstone National Park is home to a thriving ecosystem of wild life, animals and plants alike, and the game reflects its geology and vegetation in a way that would make you feel you actually visited.
9 Mimpi
Not all canines are vicious. If you’re not big on wild wolves, you can always try Mimpi, a game where you play as a dog searching for his master across eight wonderfully psychedelic worlds in charming illustrations. In this fantastic adventure, puzzle, and platformer game, you use your wits and observational skills to interact with the world and explore a beautiful silent story told in pictures.
Mimpi was nominated for the European Games Awards for Best European Mobile Game and Best European Art Direction as well as the Czech Game of the Year for Visual Arts Excellence in 2014, and remains one of the most replayable animal simulators for phone and tablet due to its gorgeous puzzles that almost never repeat.
8 The Dinosaurs Are Here
In this physics-based sandbox game, you play as a dinosaur exploring the limitations of the park in which it’s being held, hunting for humans and trying to survive recurring attacks from pestilent security guards. The game is extremely fun, and is known for its procedural animations, advanced dinosaur IK system, and ragdoll human prey that are extremely fun to grab, shake around and eat as a dinosaur.
Playing as an apex predator does not make it any easier, however. You still have to navigate hunger, thirst, health, and stamina during your play, and avoid an overpowered AI with an advanced perception system that relies on sight and hearing to translocate you in the park.
7 The Shelter Series
The Shelter series is one of the best animal simulator games ever to make it on Steam, with three editions where you play as a mother badger, lynx and elephant matriarch who try to protect their young, chart a way forward and teach them the skills they need to survive in the unforgiving wild.
In all three editions, the gameplay wonderfully reflects the dangers and perils these animals have to face in the wild, and gives you a number of choices that you have to make on behalf of your offspring to great or terrible consequences. The gameplay is enhanced against a striking backdrop of cubist art and enchanting soundtrack that helps you truly lose yourself in the experience.
6 Lost Ember
Unlike other animal simulators of their kind, Lost Ember lets you explore the wilderness as several animals instead of one. Fly across the plains as a hummingbird, dig the ground as a mole, tumble through the grass as a wombat and explore the shimmering blue lakes as a fish. Lost Ember is a five-hour indie exploration game that keeps on giving.
As you experience the land and sea, you also come across a number of evidence showcasing the fall of mankind, making you think about what choices they may have made to get to this point, only to forget it in the next five minutes and go back to your true, animal self with much bigger things to reckon with.
5 Skatebird
In Skatebird, you play as a lonely little bird who passes time as their owner is away by skating across a giant homemade rink. There, you can grind on bendy straws, kickflip over staplers, and carve killer lines through cardboard as you showcase your incredible skills to an audience of one.
Although the owner is away on work all of the time, the game still has a social element, as different birds will come to check you out the more you skate, and together, you will use your amazing skating skills to try and fix your big friend’s life.
4 Animalia Survival
Animalia Survival came to be known as one of the best animal simulator games out there, letting you play as your favorite African animal in a multiplayer ecosystem that pitches you against your equals and predators in the wild. Whether you choose to play as a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore, Animalia Survival puts you up against a realistic open world in the Savannah, where survival is not so easy as it may seem.
Out there, you are the product of the choices you make every night, and whether you will live to see the next sunrise is entirely up to your skills, intelligence and a bit of love and luck from mother nature.
3 Squirrel With A Gun
Squirrel with a gun is exactly what it sounds like. In it, you play as a squirrel who explores a man-made world of buildings and asphalt, armed with a gun and a homicidal tendency towards combat missions. In it, you defend yourself against ‘agents’, deflect their melee attacks with your natural squirrel skills, climb and jump across platforms to evade them, and use your weapon to recoil junkrat style to jump even higher.
You also have a choice to either befriend the locals and help them out for goodies, or mug them and get your own.
2 Goat Simulator
Goat Simulator is a one-of-a-kind sandbox game where you play as a literal goat, except that goat can do everything you can imagine and a bit more, and you have all the weapons and gadgets you can ever dream of to help you get whatever it is that you want. At the end of the day, you win the more destruction you wreak, extra points if you do it with style.
In the latest edition, Goat Simulator 3, you get to do everything you love with friends, as you gather a herd of special goatones to wreak havoc on the world together.
1 Stray
Stray is perhaps the most well-known animal simulator game out there, specifically because the way it’s been built lets you explore the world the same way a cat would. This includes scratching surfaces, playing with strangers, catching a snooze on a rooftop, and even throwing a ball around like you’re not on a mission to save an entire world of trapped humanoid robots from a flesh-eating infestation or something.
In it, you are augmented with a robotic wearable that helps you light the way and unlock a few coded doors, but everything you do, you do on your own as a cat.